On New Year’s Eve, timepieces linked to the atomic clock will read 23:59:60 before flashing to 00:00:00, so get ready for a rare new year's countdown: 'Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, one…'! A leap second - the first for three years - is to be added to the international timescale Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) immediately before midnight on 31 December 2008, thereby delaying the start of 1 January by one second.